alt.story

Have you seen any short films? Very many short films? I've been increasingly interested in short forms.

I wrote a ten minute play last year that was produced here at my little midwestern college -- and I've written several more this summer. (early drafts yet.) i'm pretty excited about flash fiction... i think the music video more aptly gets at the experience of contemporary existence than most other extant forms (eg. maybe the music video is the new great american novel). i'm watching the short films on triggerstreet and a couple of other places, and i wrote a treatment for a short film about a mucisian who is obsessed with writing the perfect short (one minute) song. The perfect one minute song (in my film) would be composed & performed in one minute.

The great difficulty as I see it -- is that these forms aren't / can't find an audience due to the deathgrip of the media industries...

part of me knows that i want it both ways. my imagination about artists finding audiences is shaped by my understanding of MASS culture. An artist hasn't foundan audience, part of me says, until they've "made it big." On the other hand -- the global monopolies & economies of scale that the BIG SIX are perpetuating -- are much of what gives rise to this notion of fame = success.

Sometime I should blog about celebrity being a format by which this hegemony is perpetrated -- but for now i'm interested not in critique but in redemption!

I -- as a consumer -- as a human being -- as a fellow artist -- as someone who is moved by art -- want a way to access these forms of indymedia.

specifically, now, i'm refering to short films (though many of my thoughts translate well to the other forms).

I can watch short films at work (with some justification since i teach about these subjects) -- but not too many or too often -- and DSL service is expensive & if only DSL-ers should get to watch indymedia (/short films) than doesn't indymedia become an even more elitist, self-referential enterprise?

So that's why i'm excited about the idea of microcinema. and i'm excited enough about it to do something about it. to try to start a microcinema here in middle eastern OHIO. but of course this is a back burner. and my front burners are fairly demanding right now. if you're a local reader (and most of you aren't) i'd love to hear how interested you'd be in volunteering to keep a microcinema organization up and running -- how regularly you'd support it (by coming)...what you think the major barriers would be...

heck I'd be interested in hearing that from non-local-ites...too...

part of me suspects that i should have as many blogs as i have "back burners" but that'd be more fragmented -- and my goal in this blog is -- i think to be more unified. so that means that many of you aren't so into indymedia rants...but others of you aren't so into news about the kids...this is like having a debate inside of your head -- in public.

peace~